Lucid Dreaming
by provocative envy
Summary: IN-PROGRESS: I smoothed my hands over my lower abdomen; his past and my present and our history, together—they were converging. There was no going back. There was no forgetting. There wasn't any room for secrets. And I had been wrong. "I trust you," I said, soft and slow. "But I don't trust that." HG/TR. (Sequel to 'Nightmare').
1. Prologue

**Lucid Dreaming**

_By: Provocative Envy_

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**PROLOGUE**

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_**September 10, 1997 **_

_**(2:45 am) **_

I had been wrong.

I had been _wrong_—the worst sort of wrong—

And it hadn't been a slight miscalculation in Arithmancy, a leftover number or an improperly drawn rune; it hadn't been an innocent mistake, a slip of the wrist, a mispronounced charm—it wasn't _easy_ like that, no, _no_—

I had been _wrong_.

I was never wrong.

"What do you mean they're _gone_?" I heard myself demand, teeth gritted and jaw clenched and fingernails biting into the tender flesh of my palms.

Next to me, Tom had his arms crossed over his bare chest. His expression was infuriatingly blank, as usual, and he was calmly appraising a much younger version of Edmond Lestrange—an Edmond I didn't know—couldn't _possibly_ know—

I shook my head, dispelling the thought, tissue-thin violet nightgown swirling around my thighs as I paced.

I had been _wrong._

"Hermione, you need to—" Lestrange started to say, face wan; the strange time turner he'd been clutching when he'd arrived was wrapped around his wrist, pebbled, multi-colored metallic surface glinting in the moonlight streaming in through the window. A pair of emerald green, crushed velvet curtains rustled with the late summer breeze, damp and warm.

"_No_," I interrupted, voice sharp, _cutting_—like a switchblade, deadly and swift. "I don't need to do _anything _except find Castor and Pollux. Your _grandchildren_, in case you've already forgotten."

Tom cleared his throat and placed his hands on my shoulders, thumbs grazing the back of my neck. My pulse jumped.

"Let him explain, sweetheart," he said quietly, dark eyes steady on Lestrange, shuttered and calculating, _piercing_—and I wondered, not for the first time, what it was that he hadn't told me about the past; what it was that he hadn't told me about what he'd _done _in the past. I had memories, yes, but they were hazy and indistinct, smudged black-and-white shapes of what constantly felt like nothing more than imaginary, overwrought dreams—

_Wrong._

_Wrong._

How could I have been wrong?

"I'm just the messenger," Lestrange said quickly, stumbling over his words. His skin was sallow, his cheekbones gaunt, and there were sparse patches of wispy black stubble all along his chin. An enormous, yellow-green bruise was peeking out from the collar of his shirt. He was visibly anxious. "They don't—_fuck_, Tom, I don't know how they found her, or you, or what they want—well, no, that's a blatant fucking lie, I can guess what it is they're after, not that it's useful, but—they have _help_, okay, and they have—"

I huffed disbelievingly.

"And who are _they_?" I asked, digging my toes into the plush ivory carpet. I felt caged in, impotent, _impatient_, like time was moving both too fast and too slow and an invisible, arbitrary deadline was creeping closer and lurking longer and—

I wanted to leave.

I wanted to scream.

I had been _wrong._

"What? You can't be serious. You don't—it's Malfoy and Avery," Lestrange answered, fidgeting with the frayed green knot of his tie. "Who else would be after you?"

Tom's grip tightened on my shoulder.

"It's _just_ Malfoy and Avery?" he drawled, tone patronizing. "Are you _sure_ about that, Edmond?"

Lestrange's mouth flapped open and closed—open and closed—open and closed—and I was reminded, rather ridiculously, of a cartoon character, exaggerated and unreal.

"Are you actually _accusing me _of—" he blustered.

"I don't know," Tom said with an absent, apathetic shrug. "Am I?"

Lestrange's eyes narrowed even as he shook out his hands, cracking his knuckles with a distracting mix of panic and terror and adrenaline. What was he so frightened of? Why was he so nervous?

"I stole a fucking _Frankenstein time turner _to come here and warn you both—I paid off fucking _Nott _to forge your fucking _marriage license_—and you're really going to play this like that, Riddle?"

I snorted.

"You didn't _steal _anything," I said, gesturing angrily to his bruises. "You look like you've been held captive for at least a month. You're thin, disheveled, unhealthily pale—I'd guess that these…_people_ eitherthreatened you or tortured you. You're awfully skittish for a simple midnight visit to your old friends, aren't you?"

Tom hummed thoughtfully, dragging his hand down the slope of my back and wrapping an arm around my waist.

"You were sent here by Malfoy and Avery, weren't you, Edmond? You referred to yourself as the _messenger_—but what is your message, exactly? Hermione would have figured out that Castor and Pollux were missing on her own, and I would have been more than able to deduce the identities of the culprits—I am already in possession of an aptly-named _Frankestein time turner_, so we don't need yours, and, as Hermione knows quite well, you're hardly a trustworthy traveling companion. Which begs the question—why are you here at all? What are you not telling us that you're _supposed _to be telling us?"

Lestrange swallowed, shuffling his feet and scratching at the corner of his mouth; his lips were dry and tacky, dead skin fluttering in unappealing translucent scabs, and I grimaced as I tried to see a family resemblance between him and the twins, tried to locate any remaining vestige of the funny, gentle, _elderly_ Edmond who I knew now, who I _loved_—

My stomach rolled.

I had been wrong.

I had been wrong.

I had been _wrong_, and Castor and Pollux had been taken.

"Look," Lestrange said, posture deflating as he sighed. "It's—Malfoy's been…_weird_ since Abraxas died, alright? He's a bloody recluse—the only people who've even seen him are Avery and Slughorn—and he's _obsessed _with revenge. Avery poisoned my fucking _butterbeer _at a quidditch game in Paris, and then he took me to Grindelwald's old hideout—"

"_What_?" Tom interjected, nostrils flaring. "Why there?"

"That's where they're keeping the twins," Lestrange replied, glancing away and rocking back on his heels. "They—they wanted me to see. _Leverage_, they called it."

I wrenched myself out of Tom's grasp.

I stalked over to my bedside table.

I snatched up my wand.

"They're alive?" I managed to ask, my insides churning—blood roiling and muscles contracting and intestines _twisting_—with remorse, with rage, with a ferocious, wholly unfamiliar shock of desperation—because I had _caused_ this and I had _meddled_ and the gaping disconnect between who I had been _before—_a Gryffindor, a soldier, a pawn and a tool and a _victim_—it was shrinking, it was dissipating, it was—

_I had been wrong._

"They're—yeah, they're alive," Lestrange said, running his hands through his hair—dark, messy, badly trimmed. "They're in the groundskeeper's cabin, they're not—they're not in the _dungeons_, or anything like that, they're just—they're confused. They're not adjusting well. One of them threw a Tiffany lamp at my head when we were introduced—got stained glass everywhere, the house elves were _not _amused."

I snorted as I went to my wardrobe, rifling through the hangers to pull down a cable-knit grey cardigan.

"That would have been Castor," I said, a sour pang of guilt causing me to falter; half of an impractical pair of champagne colored ballet flats hung limply from the tip of my index finger. "He—he can be a bit impulsive."

I took a moment—a _valuable_ fucking moment—to rearrange my features into something placid and indecipherable.

I had been _wrong_.

"You said they were in the groundskeeper's cabin," Tom remarked, changing the subject—I could feel him watching me, could feel his gaze lingering on my unzipped knapsack, on the scuffed brown boots and quilted black tights and slim-fitting khaki trousers I was methodically packing. It was unsettling. "That's in the garden, isn't it?"

I briefly froze, recognizing his tone—casual, dry, contemplative, a well-worn mask for urgency—and I remembered, suddenly, that Tom had spent several months in Grindelwald's hideout.

"Yeah, it's, ah, it's out past the greenhouses," Lestrange confirmed, shifting restlessly. "Why?"

Tom sniffed and offered Lestrange a practiced, perfunctory smile. My unease intensified.

_Wrong._

_Wrong._

I had been _wrong._

"It is immaterial," Tom said dismissively, strolling towards his own dresser and pulling open a drawer. "I assume that Malfoy and Avery both want Hermione dead? Is that correct?"

"Yeah," Lestrange replied, frowning. "But—there's something else going on, too, there has to be—why else would they bother luring her back to them? Could've sniped her from the bloody rooftops _here_ instead of going through all the fucking trouble they have—kidnapping the twins, poisoning me—"

Tom tugged on an undershirt.

"It does not matter," he said, fastening the platinum clasp of his wristwatch with precise, meticulous movements. "They know who I am, and they know what I'm capable of—they witnessed it firsthand. _You _witnessed it firsthand. You're aware of the lengths to which I'll go to protect her." He paused, and the silence was heavy. "Just as _they_ are aware of the lengths to which _she _would go to protect _me_. Isn't that right, Edmond?"

_I had been wrong._

Lestrange compressed his lips into a thin line, pointed chin trembling.

"You're an _ass_," he snapped, unwinding the chain of his time turner. "Does she even know—"

"That she killed Abraxas Malfoy?" Tom finished pleasantly. "Yes, she does."

Lestrange stared at Tom, hard and unblinking.

"I'm ready to go," I announced, stepping forward.

Tom arched an eyebrow.

"You have my diary?" Tom asked, tucking his wand into his trouser pocket.

"Of course," I replied, tossing him my bag. "You take it everywhere, don't you?"

Our eyes met, and he quirked his lips into something small and private and fragile—I felt an overwhelming surge of fondness and fear, prickly and unexpected, like the needling thorns on the stem of a rose—pain and blood hiding behind pristine, unmarked beauty—

I had been _wrong_.

"It's a very good insurance policy, sweetheart," he murmured, tilting his head to the side. "And I wasn't speaking metaphorically when I said I would protect you with my life—both of them, in fact."

I studied him carefully, thinking about vague, violent, half-remembered shadows—gleaming red eyes and unnaturally white skin and a flat, formless face, like a reptile, like a _snake_—

I smoothed my hands over my lower abdomen; his past and my present and our history, together—they were converging. There was no going back. There was no forgetting. There wasn't any room for secrets.

And I had been wrong_._

"I trust you," I said, soft and slow. "But I don't trust that."

He smirked.

"Four and three-sixteenths," Lestrange said abruptly. "And then step down as hard as you can—the sand has to separate from the glass. Make sure you're touching."

"Ready?" Tom asked conversationally, holding up his time turner.

The nightmare wasn't over.

I had been _wrong_.

###

**Author's Note**: Hi.

So.

This is obviously a sequel to Nightmare—and I would HIGHLY recommend reading that before reading this, although I suppose it TECHNICALLY isn't necessary as there will be a ton of exposition throughout this story that hints at what happened before. Some of the more subtle dialogue details and clues might not make sense to you, though, if you haven't read it.

Now.

This story is HEAVILY centered around the Tomione relationship—she's still pregnant, and I hinted at issues they might have in the final chapter of 'Nightmare', so those issues will be brought to the forefront here and have an overarching, enormous impact on events later on. (Expect angst. And some hate sex. Whatever.)

Another big element of this fic will be the relationship between Hermione and Edmond—his unrequited love, her reconciliation with who he is as a young man and who he is as an old one—Edmond is basically an original character, and he is VERY dear to me as a writer, so he's been promoted from secondary to main, and he'll also play a large role in the ending. He is magnificent, okay, and I WILL NOT BE DETERRED.

I've written this story from Hermione's point of view again, mostly for continuity, and her development will in some ways mirror her development in 'Nightmare'—her struggles in this story will be less about being afraid and more about being angry. Remember that she's a Slytherin in this version of the future, and that she didn't have Harry around to keep her morally grounded—her best friends are Castor and Pollux, and even though she loves them just as fiercely as she loved Harry and Ron in canon, the twins are sneaky and cunning and highly manipulative.

I'm expecting this fic to come in at around 125k-150k words, depending on how long it takes me to shut up, and I'll probably update once every 2-3 weeks. I'll post previews of every chapter on my Tumblr, too, so…that's a thing.

I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT DOING THIS SEQUEL, IN CASE THAT ISN'T CLEAR.

xoxo

P.S. TOM STILL HAS HIS DIARY AND THERE WILL BE DIARY ENTRIES AGAIN BECAUSE HE'S PLOTTING SOMETHING AND THAT NEEDS TO BE TALKED ABOUT. ALSO FEELINGS. HE HAS FEELINGS. THOSE NEED TO BE TALKED ABOUT TOO.

P.P.S. **malfoygrangers **made me the gorgeous cover for this story. So did **ibuzoo**, actually, which is the cover I'll be using for my Tumblr updates. They are both much more talented than I am and should be praised accordingly.

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	2. Fire Starter

**Lucid Dreaming**

_By: Provocative Envy_

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**CHAPTER ONE**

_Fire Starter_

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_**February 1, 1945**_

_**6:15 am**_

_We have been in Toulouse for three hours, and Hermione has still not spoken to me._

_The Pyrenees are to the south, snow-capped and craggy, and the Garonne winds sinuously through the city center, ancient stone bridges with traditional Gothic arches spanning across the water—it is temperate, the breeze encumbered by only a mild sort of chill, and the rain is a fine, lukewarm mist, clouds more white than grey, skies more grey than blue. It is pretty enough, but—_

_She has decided—arbitrarily, no doubt—to hold me accountable for the twins' disappearance. She can be awfully fucking dramatic when the mood strikes._

_I am not surprised._

_I have been…__**listless**__ since arriving in the future; I had such a singular focus before I met Hermione, such a crystal clear picture of what I wanted and how I would bend the laws of magic and reality to achieve it—she ruined all of that, literally as well as figuratively, and I suspect that I am angrier about that than I was previously willing to acknowledge._

_Because I __**wanted**__ her, wanted every piece of her that I could scrounge and steal and scavenge— and that blinded me._

_As a result, I have been looking into…alternative methods of succeeding where I once failed. None of my research has indicated that any of my options are the least bit viable—fairytales and badly translated origin myths are unbelievably shoddy source materials—_

_**However.**_

_Lestrange was oddly cagey about the finer details associated with the elder Malfoy's ludicrous plans, but he __**did **__mention that Malfoy had help, separate from Avery's incompetence and Slughorn's self-important twittering. The time turner Lestrange was carrying was nothing like Grindelwald's—Grindelwald's was sleek and well-crafted, metal edges trimmed and glass highly polished; Lestrange's had a warped casing, a cracked porcelain dial, and a mess of sloppily engraved runes. It did not come from Grindelwald's private collection—which I had been unable to locate on my own—and was therefore fabricated by a third party._

_The identity of this third party is egregiously easy to guess. _

_If I am correct, their involvement in Malfoy's scheme presents me with a unique opportunity to capitalize on some of the more fantastical magical lore—if the rumors are true, at least. _

_I suppose I'll find out for certain when we get to Paris. It would be beneficial, I admit, if the twins were already with us—Castor and Pollux are outstandingly protective of Hermione, but they have become…fond of me. They would be useful in my hunt for this particular artifact. Pollux has a peculiar talent for Charms that has blossomed exponentially under my tutelage, and Castor is a rather fascinating amalgam of charisma and grit, equally as cunning as he is impetuous—he is also in possession of a mind more than admirably suited for puzzles and riddles and labyrinthine mazes—_

_They are both valuable assets to my cause, and I regret that my original followers never showed such promise._

_Hermione's friendship with them is fortuitous._

_Her presence here, unfortunately, is less than that._

_This version of her is not so different from the one I knew before—she is meticulous and intelligent, intuitive and clever, vulnerable to her insecurities yet brave enough to want to confront them—but she is __**shrewd**__, now. She understands the importance of keeping herself guarded, of protecting her thoughts and not advertising her emotions without due provocation._

_She is still beautiful._

_Her pregnancy remains a point of contention, however. She does not remember the majority of our relationship—only has the barest, half-erased sketch of an impression of what things were like between us—and is skeptical of everything that I share with her. She continues to refuse my offer of my own memories—which is, frankly, an enormously sensible decision; I can concede, if only to myself, that I would ameliorate the less flattering components of our time together—and she has begun to fixate on the scar she has on her arm, has taken to absently tracing the letters with the spongy pink eraser of her pencil as she works on complicated mathematical theorems for the Ministry._

_I often wonder how long it will take her to discover a way to circumvent the limitations of the previous timeline—how long it will take her to unearth the darker parts of her past and the villainous role I played in them._

_I often wonder if she would forgive me—if I even did anything that warranted forgiveness in the first place._

_I don't think I did._

_-TMR_

###

_**(7:00 am)**_

The train station was grimy and decrepit—we were sitting on slatted, rickety wooden benches held together with rusted cast-iron bolts tinged orange from the damp air, backs against pitted cement brick walls defaced by chalky splatters of graffiti in broken French and misspelled German.

"I get that this estate is Unplottable, but _surely_ we could Apparate within or around its _general vicinity _so that muggle transportation isn't necessary," I said, voice as icy as I could manage with red-rimmed eyes and cheeks still tacky from newly shed tears.

Lestrange glanced at me, the points of his yellowing, over-starched shirt collar digging into his neck.

"There's a—complication," he said, haltingly.

Across the platform, Tom scoffed.

"_Complication_? Look at the date, sweetheart," he suggested, sounding bored. "I didn't realize that we were being dragged back to France during the exact time I was already here—might've put up a bit of a fight if I had."

"That's…" I trailed off uncertainly.

"I wasn't exaggerating when I said that Malfoy had lost his shit," Lestrange said with a helpless shrug.

"Right," I replied, contemplative. "But is he—well, is he a _reasonable _sort of crazy? Or is he—"

"Attemping to jumpstart the apocalypse?" Tom cut in.

Lestrange flinched.

"Both," he said, squinting down the empty platform; a heavy gust of wind blew a grainy, ink-streaked sheet of newspaper across the train tracks. "He's—_grieving_, yeah? He's dead set on destruction right now, and he doesn't much care who gets in his way. He wants to kill you, Hermione, but he still—he blames Tom for everything that happened, and killing you is mostly about making Tom suffer."

I chewed my lip, frustration simmering lowly in the pit of my stomach.

"While your insight into our presumed enemy's psyche is fascinating, you're doing a bang-up job of deflecting from what we initially asked you," I bit out, neatly crossing my ankles as a nearby cluster of pigeons began to coo. "_Try again_."

Lestrange studied me intently.

"You're different," he observed, jiggling his foot and leaning forward in his seat.

Tom sauntered closer, hands tucked into his pockets.

"How so?" I retorted.

Lestrange shot me an odd, slightly incredulous look.

"You said—you called Malfoy '_our presumed enemy_'," he said, folding his elbows across his knees. "As if you were seriously considering whether or not I was telling you the truth."

I raised an eyebrow.

"I don't _know_ you," I told him, drumming my fingers against the top of my thigh. "Whatever interactions we had in the past—the _other _past, that is—I neither remember nor trust the integrity of. You're an undefined variable—a question mark. Your only investment in this entire debacle is the safety of your grandsons, who you are _barely_ acquainted with, and whatever fading scraps of misguided loyalty you've retained for Tom. You're madder than _our presumed enemy_ if you think I'm not doubtful of every last word coming out of your mouth."

Lestrange's features flickered like a burnt-out light bulb, twisted copper filaments sparking and dimming, off and then on and then off again, his confusion ultimately giving way to a crackling surge of comprehension—

"You don't remember anything, do you?" he asked calmly. "None of it. Your last month with me, after Tom got taken—Christmas with my family, our argument with Dumbledore, you Obliviating me in the middle of a bloody cornfield—none of what I told you that night survived your trip to the future, did it?"

I cocked my head to the side.

"What are you—"

"Train's coming," Tom interrupted, clipped and cold. "Maybe two minutes out."

I frowned.

Lestrange grimaced.

"Likely for the best," he said, hauling himself upright and moving towards the tracks.

"Lestrange," Tom called after him.

"Yeah?" Lestrange replied tiredly.

Tom paused. In the distance, the shrill wail of a train whistle pierced through the air.

"This isn't your second chance," he said, voice smooth and quiet and _dangerous_, too, raw silk over hard iron— "You didn't win last time, and you won't win now."

Lestrange's spine stiffened for a jagged fraction of a second, the delicate wings of his shoulder blades poking through the threadbare cotton of his shirt. He snorted.

"You scared, Riddle?" he asked, chin dipping as he half-turned to look back at Tom.

Tom chuckled, but there wasn't any humor in it—and I felt my skin prickle and my heart race and my blood thin and it was like being reminded all over again that there was a part of Tom that I didn't know, a part of him that he kept locked away behind gentle kisses and weightless smiles, a part of him that was entirely separate from the Tom who could watch football with my father on Saturday and write evocative, well-informed editorials for the _Daily Prophet_ on Monday, who could carry Castor out of the Leaky Cauldron on Thursday night and teach Pollux how to cast a Patronus on Friday morning—

"You know I'm not afraid of a little blood," Tom drawled, smirking; he tapped the inside of his forearm with two long fingers. "Don't you, Edmond?"

Lestrange swallowed just as the train swept in to the station with a wave of thick white steam and hissing engine oil and squealing brakes.

"Yeah, Tom," he muttered, upper lip curled in derision. "I know."

I stood up abruptly.

"I need to throw up," I declared, pushing past Tom. "My morning sickness is awfully persistent. Get a private compartment, will you, Edmond? I'd like to change my clothes, too, and then maybe discuss how it is that you came to be captured by _our presumed enemy_ in France—and all while you were supposed to be finishing your seventh year at Hogwarts. That's what you were up to—allegedly—when Tom was reworking his time turner at Grindelwald's, isn't it?"

Lestrange sputtered, and Tom grabbed my elbow, securing an arm around my hips from behind.

"Go get a compartment," Tom instructed Lestrange, nails sharp against my stomach. "We'll be on in a minute. Also—find Hermione some lemon tea and ginger snaps—they help her nausea."

Lestrange hesitated.

"I'd rather not let you out of my sight," he replied matter-of-factly, scuffing the toe of his loafer against the ground. "My life is fucking forfeit if I go back to Malfoy without at least one of you, and—no offense, Tom, but I wouldn't put it past you to think you know a better way around all of this. You're arrogant like that."

Tom scowled.

"It's not _arrogance_ if I end up being _correct_," he said.

Lestrange nodded slowly.

"Replace 'arrogant' with 'paranoid' and I think we might finally agree on something," he said with a petulant sneer.

I rolled my eyes and stepped forward, ignoring Tom's stringent hold on my waist.

"We'll be down there," I told Lestrange, gesturing to the far end of the platform. "Find a compartment. Come on, Tom."

Tom didn't let go of me as we walked, and the heat of his body was a comforting weight against my side—I had gotten used to him, in the weeks since he'd arrived, used to the magnitude of his presence and the way he could fill a room and silence an argument and make me feel safe, secure, with just a quick quirk of his lips—_vibrant red and soft, so soft_—and a snap of his fingers. He was a contradiction, always, sleek and slippery and difficult to pin down; he laughed and he lied and he carried around a constant shadow of the past—he was terrifying in his anger and enchanting in his brilliance, the intensity of his gaze often odd but never off-putting.

I understood why I had loved him.

I understood why I had been fascinated—why I had been _foolish_, why I had been so willing to disregard my fear—which I was now so certain had been real, real and clear and _right_—and forge a relationship with him. I did. I understood.

But I didn't agree.

"What the _hell _do you think you're doing, sweetheart?" he demanded as soon as we were out of earshot.

My posture turned rigid.

"Excuse me?"

"You are a _liability _without your—prior experience," he said, molars clacking as he ground his teeth together. "Telling Lestrange that you don't remember him—or anything else—was a _preposterous _error in judgment. If you truly wanted to get Castor and Pollux back unscathed, you may have just _thrown away_ our only chance to do so."

My gut constricted around a furious, spasmodic lurch of blood and bile, muscles bunching and ribcage tapering and veins splintering from the force of my rage—

"You have a terribly bad habit of condescending to people when you're frightened," I replied, lifting my chin. "Why is that? Is it simple narcissism? Or…something more complicated?"

His expression tightened.

"You forget, _Hermione_, that I am far more familiar with _your_ faults than you are with mine," he murmured, cheekbones protruding in stark, harsh lines against the side of his face. "And I promise—_I am better at this game than you_."

I crossed my arms over my abdomen, knew that if I didn't compress and consolidate and _control myself _I would lose at this, lose to him, and that was not an option, _I would not permit it to be_, no, not when the stakes were so high—

"_Really_? Are you?" I hissed. "Because part of playing a good game, _Tom_, is knowing when to cut your losses. _Sometimes, _it's only possible to gain forward momentum by taking a step back. Your strategy—if I can even call it that—was idiotic. We are at an _insurmountable_ disadvantage in terms of what _we_ know and what _Lestrange_ knows. Surely I don't need to _educate_ you on the _significance_ of that."

Two men in dingy, coal stained coveralls darted past us, wrenches in hand—one of them had a checkered, red and white handkerchief folded into his back pocket, an insistent splash of color in an otherwise bleak ensemble.

"_Now_ who's condescending, sweetheart?" Tom returned, jaw clenched.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Simple narcissism, then," I decided, voice sticky with disdain. "No wonder your _minions _were all so eager to mutiny."

He immediately opened his mouth, tongue curled around his front teeth as if he wanted to _taste _the bitterness of his response—

"Riddle!" Lestrange shouted from the door of the train car. "We've got to go—train's leaving."

Tom's mouth snapped shut.

His nose twitched.

He adjusted the lapels of his jacket, yanking them down and into place.

"I'll take your bag, sweetheart," he said curtly, hauling my knapsack over his shoulder and brushing past me to board the train.

The tension he left behind felt bulletproof.

I followed him onto the train.

The compartment Lestrange was in was cramped—oak paneled walls were bordered on either side by long, red wool upholstered benches, and a small, cracked window was covered with heavy linen curtains, lock fastened and enamel worn. The floor was scuffed, nondescript hardwood, dings and divots and dents scarred black with age; the lighting was electric, cheap brass sconces spaced out every few feet and an overhead stained-glass fixture swinging precariously as the train began to move. A wobbly plywood tabletop was folded out from the space beneath the window, a plain black tray with a steaming teakettle and several porcelain cups resting on top of it.

It was unimpressive.

"There wasn't anything…larger?" I asked, dragging a dubious fingertip over the frame of a bench. It came up grey with dust. "Or cleaner?"

Tom shouldered past me, the straps of my bag bunched together in his fist; his knuckles, when I glanced down, were bright white.

"How delightful," he said flatly. "More complaining. Hurry up with the tea, Lestrange—Hermione's quite _particular _about the temperature. I'd hate to set her off."

I shrugged off my cardigan with a disbelieving huff. The train picked up speed, bumping over the tracks and jostling the tray on the table.

"Ah, yes, _irrefutable logic _in the face of your ridiculous power trip—I'm a veritable _nag_," I said in a tone as corrosive—as _scornful_—as a sheet of acid rain.

Lestrange looked between us, eyes wide and darting side to side before settling on my bare shoulders. He ducked his head and started to pour the tea.

"_Irrefutable logic_—d'you think we're solving a math problem, sweetheart? That there's a formula for this? Solve for 'x' and you get a prize?" Tom bit out.

My jaw jutted forward as I tore my bag out of his grasp.

"Do you have a better suggestion?" I simpered, footing unstable as the train swayed in the bend of a curve. "Oh, what a silly question, of course you do. You'd likely _remove _'x' from the equationentirely before attempting to _solve _for it—why be _clever_ when you can be _destructive_, isn't that right?"

Lestrange held up a shriveled, anemic-yellow lemon.

"Wedges or slices?" he asked weakly.

I rummaged around my bag, pulling out an oversized cashmere jumper and a pair of sleek black leggings; wind whistled through the compartment, thin, high-pitched howls emanating from the fissures in the dirty window glass.

"Slices," Tom answered for me, long limbs sprawled out across the seat of a bench.

The train car lurched and teetered, breaks screeching as the wheels straightened themselves, and the porcelain cups rattled in their tray. Tom's gaze was hard as he watched me lose my balance.

"_Wedges_," I countered crossly, grabbing onto a wall sconce to avoid stumbling into his lap.

Lestrange coughed.

"I—ah—I don't—"

The train swerved.

The overhead lamp swung in a violent arc, smashing into the ceiling with a crunch and a crash and a fizzle—

Steel shrieked.

Darkness fell.

Inside, there was nothing, black on black on black—

"Tom," I breathed, spine tingling with awareness as the train gently rocked to a halt.

I felt as if there was an insect buzzing directly behind my ear, hovering just out of sight, wings beating louder and faster and closer and pincers glistening and reflective, unseeing eyes roving like tricolored honeycombs as they caught the light—menacing, lurking, deep beetle green and jeweled dark violet, washed out with every flutter and glint and whisper—

"Lestrange," Tom barked. "Care to _fucking_ explain?"

The sound of porcelain shattering cut through the air.

I waved my hand.

A compact ball of swirling blue flames erupted in the center of my palm, illuminating the interior of the train car.

"I don't—" Lestrange stammered, voice shaking.

"Try to Apparate," I said suddenly, chest tightening with something that might have been panic. "Tom, try to Apparate."

Tom stood still, forehead wrinkled in concentration.

He closed his eyes.

I waited, skin pleasantly warm from the fire—my nerves, though, were pinched and frozen, ends ragged and frayed, and a single jarring word was echoing in my head, atonal and dissonant, a cacophonous multifaceted overlap—

_Trap._

_Trap._

_Trap._

"I can't," Tom said, breaking the silence. His face was a pink-tinged mask of fury. "I can't Apparate. There's a block—a ward."

Lestrange inhaled sharply.

"Oh, _fuck,_" he said, clutching his wand. "It—the timeline—this was a trap. I didn't—_fuck_."

I licked my lips.

The flames in my hand pulsed with the rhythm of my heartbeat.

"No," I disagreed. "This isn't a trap. Malfoy—if he's after revenge, he wouldn't want to…"

"Wouldn't want to kill us quickly," Tom finished, looking thoughtful. "And he knew we were coming to him, anyway—that's why he took the twins."

Lestrange's mouth turned down at the corners.

"Then what the fuck is going on?" he asked, blinking rapidly.

A dull thud jolted the train.

Almost simultaneously, the screaming scrape of twisting metal accompanied pounding footsteps and slamming doors.

The noise thundered through my eardrums.

"This isn't a trap," I repeated, staring at Tom. "This is an ambush."

###

**Author's Note**: Cliffhangers are my spirit animal.

SORRY/NOT SORRY

Thank you to those of you who review—the overwhelmingly positive response to this fic so far has been pretty rad. I am pleased and more than slightly bashful about this development.

You guys can expect the next chapter in 1-2 weeks.

xoxo

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